


Mind me

by toddykun



Series: healing takes time [1]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Depersonalization, Derealization, Gen, Lost of memories, Mental Health Issues, Paranoia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Repression of Memories, Sense of Self, Slade is a trigger warning lol, Struggling teenagers, repression of feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-25 00:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14964879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toddykun/pseuds/toddykun
Summary: We wish sometimes for things to change, but we don't really know how much they can do that.





	1. From Inside out

Raven didn’t want to talk about it. And every part of her that claimed attention, that wanted her to show something, to understand something or _to feel something_ , did no more than make her more wary in her behavior towards her friends, or towards anyone for that matter. After Trigon’s defeat, the world was restored and her friends reunited with her. The outside world wasn’t Trigon’s anymore but in some places of her mind, _it was_.

Outside her room, in that exact moment, Beast boy’s laugh intertwined with Starfire’s and Cyborg’s (who knows where Robin was, making some unknown but important investigation, probably)  and touched something into her mind, something pink and content and so _uncontrollably hers_ that she didn’t want to acknowledge as hers or as, well, what it was: _happiness_. The fear for what could happen if she let her emotions free, and Trigon was still where it was before, even after _his_ death.

And even when Trigon was no more, even when his father wasn’t there anymore as an unavoidable danger, _even when he didn’t exist at all now_ , she couldn’t get rid of that feeling of uneasiness, of complete and utter horror for the past, of fear for her friends and for the city she was protecting with them. She felt like Trigon was going to appear out of nowhere just to laugh at her face and destroy everything she loved just for the fun of it or maybe to give her a lesson. It was impossible for that scenario to actually happen, but the doubt was there and it didn’t want to go somewhere else.

The worst part was that her feelings knew she could be free now, only if she wanted, of course. But she was too paranoid, too stressed out to understand her new position. So they insisted, and insisted. It was kind of tedious to go meditate now, her feelings too active to be quiet and listen, approaching her every two seconds just to tell her what they thought of their situation.

Pink laughed out every time she remembered she was free to do it, _happiness_ pouring from every part of herself; Gray had the littlest of smiles crossing her lips, as _timid_ as always, but smiling nonetheless; Green was smiling with her security on herself and her proudness and her _braveness_ ; Orange was going her way, she didn’t change that much since Trigon’s defeat but she was a little respectful now (but, really, _just a little, rudeness_ was _her mark,_ she couldn’t change it); Purple, well, purple was like always, she didn’t want to think about her as much as Purple protested -because, _“Trigon is not here anymore, you can love! You can love, Raven!”._ Brown was… relaxed, but she was always relaxed _, but then_ even Red was calm; her rage tamed and controlled, more normal anger than anything.

Her emotions wanted her freedom, but Raven, the whole, complete Raven, the Raven the world saw was apathetic, uninterested in such strong feelings, centered in what was important and _lonely_ , so lonely even when Beast Boy fought for her and told her she wasn’t, even when her friends loved her as only a family could, even when she knew she wasn’t really lonely.

Purple insisted she didn’t need to be lonely, of course, she had friends, heck, and she even had a crush. Not that Raven acknowledge that, Purple with her passion and Pink with her happiness were her more ignored emotions, and the ones she needed more, according to them (and according to Yellow, but did somebody asked her about her opinion? no, so Yellow just rolled her eyes and continued to read her infinite collection of books, memories and data).

Even before the whole prophecy thing, she didn’t get out too freely of her room, only when it was vital (like when a villain attacked the city) or when the titans insisted too much. But now, she felt like she _couldn’t do it at all_ , no mattering the circumstances, sometimes she even needed to drag herself away from her room, reminding herself that when she stepped outside her room the world wouldn’t be destroyed by Trigon, her friends would be there, waiting her and trusting her abilities.

She wasn’t so sure how the world really survived Trigon’s destruction, and she didn’t know if Azarath, her birth place, restored as well as the Earth.

Once, she tried to contact her mother, there was no response that time and so she didn’t try again, the bravery she collected for that opportunity melting away. She didn’t know what to think except that maybe her mother really died, after all, and that maybe Azarath, unlike the Earth, didn’t recover from Trigon’s destruction. She could go and see it for herself but… _What if her mother was really dead? What if the place she was born in was completely destroyed by his father? What if she was the last Azarathian? What if she didn’t save everyone like she thought? What if she failed? What if her father won after all, even if was just a little?_

She wouldn’t lie, she missed her mother; she missed Galya, her nursemaid; she missed Azar, her teacher; she missed the monks of Azarath, her caretakers. But the uncertainty of what it was or what it wasn’t was second to the scary truth she could find there and so that anxiety kept her slaved to the unknown, to the uncertainty.

Sometimes, she barely could-

“Raven, are you there? Come on, Rae, we need you now!”

Then, there was knocking. Raven opened her eyes, her thoughts interrupted, resting in her bed, the voice coming through the door insisted and insisted and for a moment, because of the grogginess of coming back from her meditation she didn’t recognize the voice until she knew. It was Beast Boy.

“What do you want now?” she asked, not making any effort to get close to the door.

“It’s…” but Beast Boy started to speak soft and low, confused and sad like a puppy, and now that worried her. She flied to the door and opened it; Beast Boy looked at her with a frown and the confusion invading his eyes.

“Beast Boy?”

“It’s… It’s Terra. She is here again”


	2. Outsider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing is, everything is always changing, even when we are not aware of it. It just takes a hint to get the whole curse of the change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boi, this got slightly longer that i was planning it too, not as long as it could be but pretty long for me, so yeah, that. hope you enjoy this one <3 I love Terra btw, girl deserved better, stop hating on mah poor baby, fandom, gosh.

She was Terra, but she wasn’t. She was a superhero, but she wasn’t. She had powers but she didn’t. She loved someone but she didn’t. She had a family but she didn’t. She had the opportunity to have a new family that fully understood her but she lost it but she didn’t, because it didn’t happen.

There were lies and truths lingering in her head. She felt like she was living a lie that she created herself and there were things that she needed to remember, that were vital to know who she was.

But, if it was a lie (was it a lie?), then she was so immerse in it that she couldn’t remember a thing that felt real from before all of this, even when she felt like she could recall some “memories”, they could not be hers. These memories felt like a weird dream or an ambiguous nightmare she wasn’t sure.

Were those memories a lie or were they the truth?

She started feeling kind of lost in her own two shoes, in that school uniform, in that home, in that life that supposed to be hers.

But, even in those circumstances, she felt free. Because she was free, wasn’t she?

Like she could be a normal teenager in a normal house, with two normal parents. But now again, was there a time when she wasn’t normal? Why was she feeling like she didn’t need to worry about controlling powers that she noticeably didn’t have? Why was she worried about villains and fitting in and betrayals and pending issues? What was that unrecognizable face that appeared sometimes on her mind?

Was this really how freedom felt?

If she had said powers, like the green boy said that time, she really couldn’t felt them. He was confused, he needed to be! Because if he wasn’t confused, if he was telling the truth, then who was she?

Since that day, she tried to ignore that boy’s voice in her head that told her constantly that she was Terra, a Teen Titan, one of them, a superhero. It didn’t make sense at all, but there was this nagging feeling at the back of her head that whispered loudly  _“remember_ ” anyways. But there was nothing to remember, nothing at all, those memories were just a construction of her imagination, a fantasy created to entertain her, a distraction from the boring days. But they appeared even when she was not bore.

Since that day too, she had been having this recurring dream. A dream full of memories, really vivid memories, clustering in an amalgam of words, faces and names without correlation. She waked up from that dream sweating and with the almost uncontrollably necessity to run away from her home and run to that boy’s home, to the Titans Tower, just to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? She didn’t know, like a dream, the reason washed away in the moment she was awake. She still felt guilty, a guilt that felt hers, so hers, but it couldn’t be hers. It made her cry desperately in the middle of the night, without knowing why at all, like there was a knife cutting through her insides mercilessly. She felt fear for the past, a past she only saw in dreams, a past she denied to have.

Sometimes, her mother would hear her screaming and crying and she would go to her room to console her, to give her some reassuring motherly love, but it felt foreign, like she was so far, far away from the scene, from her whole being. Her mother would say “Tara, honey, are you okay?” and it felt wrong in her lips, like there was no way that was her name or like here was no way that woman should know her name. That name was reserved for her and her family, no to civilians. But she was civilian. That was the name of the girl hugged by that woman but it didn’t felt whole, something was missing and she didn’t know what. In those moments, where that girl was hugged by that woman, she felt like she was floating in space looking at the scene from the outside, like it didn’t have anything to do with her, she was not part of that reality. It didn’t make sense to feel so detached from reality but there she was, away from the scene, just a bystander of her body being hugged by a mother, but maybe it was that what made her feel so foreign, a hug by  _a_  mother.

_Mother._

_Hug._

_Love._

Those concepts didn’t feel correct in her mouth, and when she tried to say them out loud one by one, she failed miserably. After three attempts, she realized she couldn’t say them at all. Tara, no, Terra,  _no_ , she felt like there was something obstructing the words, like her tongue couldn’t let them pass out of her mouth not matter the context or the phrase.

She tried to say them on a quote and couldn’t. She tried to call her mother and couldn’t. She tried to say “I love you” to any of her parents and couldn’t.

She tried to ignore how much that distressed her.

Months passed by, summer roaring anew and vacations just starting, she found herself thinking nonstop about all the issue even after school ended. Repeating the questions in her head and scribbling doodles of whatever passed by in her mind onto her old notebook. In her room, the heat from summer was strongly present and her windows open let the wind enter in it, moving her hanging uniform now useless in a soothing way. But being in her room now felt like a burden, like it was wrong, like she shouldn’t be there wasting her time.

The feeling came and went sometimes, and in that exact moment when it hit her, she tried to distract herself looking again at her notebook where the doodles were. Anxiety picked at her when a weird doodle of a masked man with just an eyehole stared straight at her, looming, observing, like he was waiting for something. Like he could say-

_Hello, Terra. Remember me?_

That snapped something in her. The same feeling of guilt that came just in the night with her dreams appeared out of nowhere. With the sudden panic bubbling in her chest, she decided to go out. Immediately. She needed to run away to somewhere.

She almost ran out of her room, leaving everything behind, like somebody was behind her trying to trap her. She told her mother she was going out, without addressing her directly, without saying I will come back later and without saying where she was going to be. Maybe because she didn’t know where she was going.

She just needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

The desert popped into her mind. Yeah, the dessert. Earth, dirt, soil and stone everywhere. Something solid, something she could hang on, something she could move but would not change over the time. Something that brought her confidence that it would not change. Or maybe she needed something more human.

She needed someone. She needed a friend.

_Dear child, you don’t have any friends._

No, that wasn’t true. She had the girls from her school. They were her friends. But they were not the ones that appeared in her mind at the time to counter that statement. The ones that appeared were… the Teen Titans.

But they…

_No more chances._

They hated her. She betrayed them. There was no forgiveness for what she did. She could try but it would be futile. But what she did? She didn’t remember but it felt like a void in her stomach. Sucking everything she was. She needed to say sorry.

_No more trust._

Please, hear me out.

_And no more mercy._

Please, no.

_She's just another criminal._

No. No. NO.

_I am so sorry._

She could not breathe anymore, her eyes unfocused, and her legs numb. She looked ahead of her but could not focus enough to understand where she was, where she headed to under her panic without knowing. It costed her but she recognized a door in front of her tower. The Titans Tower’s door. Tears started running down her face at the familiar sight, relief washing over her. She tried to give a step towards it but failed, almost falling onto the ground. She didn’t know how she got there. She didn’t see the big rock broken on the beach either. She continued to try to get to the entrance, the thought of her friends behind that door giving her strength.

_You see, my dear apprentice, you belong to me. Your so called friends are just going to throw you out in the moment that they see you. Get back to your so normal and peaceful life, you-_

No, she was Terra, she was Tara too. She did have friends. She didn’t belong to anyone. And she never really had a normal and peaceful life anyways, why to keep lying to herself? She needed to accept who she was. She had a past, a horrible past she didn’t like at all, and she tried to erase it, to forget it completely, to stop it for repeating. But there were good things in that past, things that she didn’t want to left behind and she was going to fight for them.

After all, she was a Teen Titan.

She knocked at the entrance with her last bit of strength and started falling into the ground, whispering without meaning to, crying for help.

_Beast Boy._

_Starfire._

_Cyborg._

_Robin._

_Raven._

_Please, I’m home._

“Please, I’m...”

Cyborg got her before she could felt into the ground. She looked destroyed, completely exhausted. Cyborg looked at her, quite not believing what was going on.

Terra was there. Dirty and hurt, completely out.

Cyborg remembered Beast Boy’s ordeal with the girl that looked like Terra, how insisting he was about it and he understood, is this was the girl then he could understand, this girl needed to be Terra, she looked exactly the same. With her long golden hair and her petite fragile frame. She was Terra, he was secure of it. Cyborg picked her up and ran to the entrance, screaming before he could stop himself

“Beast Boy! Get Raven, Starfire, you get Robin, y’all not gonna believe this”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I never explained this fic to any of u, probably beacuase i'm shit at explaining stuff, no matter the language, I just suck at it lol This fic started as a project for a fanfiction club in my college, it was mean to be super indulgent (it still is tho lol) because of my nostalgic fucking feelings for the old teen titans and it was mean to be six short character studies, one short chapter per character. But along the way I found a story to tell, a story that needed to be told for the series that ended before it could give us everything it deserved. So, the story ended transforming itself in a "charcter study connected trough a background story" series (because after I end this story im going to write other two that have other heavy shit to dealt with). So yeah, there's that, college is ending soon so i gonna get more time to write and things. see u soon!

**Author's Note:**

> hey! i hope that you had enjoyed this first chapter and sorry for any mistake in like...everything xD I have years without writing fanfiction specifically and my mother language is not english so kinda trying to get the hand of it again ha teen titans was like my childhood obsession and im still kinda mad about the cancelation of the old show and the actual restart in TTG! but well, hope to read ur opinion (if there is anyone that is still alive in this fandom except for me lol), see ya <3


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